The Transvestite thing.

The Transvestite Thing
This requires some explanation, not least to myself.
I dressed up a few times in women’s clothing when I was in my teens and early twenties. It was mostly for fancy dress parties. My sisters would help me and they’d really try to make me look like a girl. I remember, once, on my mum’s suggestion, using small apples for breasts. I really liked it, because I looked really good and it was a total babe magnet.
One time, when I was first at Uni, I went to a party with my sister’s sixth form friends. I wore a Victorian dress which we got through my mum’s connection with the library theatre. My sister had made an elaborate robot costume. It turned out it wasn’t a fancy dress party after all. They had just told a few hippy kids that it was, for a laugh. I snogged so many girls that night. They were all really interested in me.
I didn’t dress up as a girl all the time, but these were interesting times of hippies, glam rock, punk, electronic and new romantics. So I guess I passed my late teens and twenties looking quite effeminate. It was cool to have a splash of makeup, some dangly earrings, big hair, an off-the-shoulder blouse.
If you had asked me if I was a transvestite, then, I would have said “No.”
The next part came much later. I was in my forties. I was a grown man. I was working part-time, in the second hand book trade, whilst being the main carer for my kids. I got a chance to take a stall to a festival. It was a chance for time off from the kids, as much as anything, a bit of “me time”. I deserved it really, I’d been suffering from depression and quite a few bad things had happened in my life. Everybody seemed to agree that it would be a good experience, so I went. It was pretty boring. I was tied to the stall nearly all the time and everybody else seemed to be having a party. I did get to meet some nice people, but I had quite a restricted view. Across the road from me, there was a shop selling Indian dresses for a tenner.
If it hadn’t been there, I wouldn’t have gone looking for it and it wasn’t as if I felt a mystical pull, or anything. It was pretty much that it was the only interesting thing that I could do. I bought a dress and wore it to work the stall. I wasn’t going for looking glam, or anything. I was going for the comedy man-in –a-dress look. I felt it was getting into the spirit.
It was a good move, basically. People were nicer to me and hung began to hang out. Some young girls came by and offered to do my nails for a quid. It was really nice, because they were taking it all very seriously. They were learning a skill which was connected with their identity as girls. I think it was good for them to do a man’s nails, because they were confident about being more experienced than me. They had a whole little kit with glitter and sequins and stuff and they really went to town.
It kind of went on from there. People came by and gave me little accessories. Two women I knew from home came and finished the job by doing my hair and make-up. But here’s the thing. They didn’t really dress me up as a woman, they dressed me up as me. I had a little goatee beard, for one thing. I didn’t look like a woman. I just looked pretty.
Later on, I shut up the stall and we went dancing. I really love dancing. I’m not inhibited about it at the best of times, but the clothes made it a different experience. Maybe it is because you look outrageous, you feel you can be outrageous. But, really, I think it is to do with femininity. There are moves I wanted to make which worked much better with this feminine statement going on. Also, I was with a couple of girls who also enjoyed dancing and it was a shared thing. If I had been dancing as a man, I would have been somehow dancing against them, but here I was truly dancing with them.
Here’s an interesting thing. We were just having fun and fooling about. It was a glorious thing and we didn’t need anybody except for ourselves, but I also think we were doing it for attention. Really I can only speak for myself. I was just grateful to have some friends and go out and party and everything I did was just to relish and enjoy life. I didn’t set off looking for attention, or not in any conscious way. But I did like it when it happened and I think the girls did, too. Really we were just dancing in a bubble and I really felt more myself than I had felt in a long time.
But the last part of the evening was a lot of fun, too. Because we met a lot of nice people and got to treat them very badly. It felt like we were fending them off, but we also really encouraged them. We ended up asking them to show us their arses. It is amazing how many of them did (more than 20, at a guess). I really think that was one of the most enjoyable times of my life. I have never laughed so much, nor experienced such comradeship. Maybe I’m weird, but it beats a night out with the lads for me.
So. Nothing happened. Tomorrow was just another day.
But I went back to the festival the next year and the Saturday night was branded the “Camp Ball” and cross dressing was encouraged. I went to some Oxfam shops and got a little gold thing, with a hoop neck. I’ve got the figure for it. It was a tube, very clingy, with no back on it almost to the arse. It went with a male figure, emphasised it really, but it had a feminine statement. It was a bit slutty but it was party wear. I wasn’t representing woman kind and I wasn’t pretending to be a woman. I wore a wig with it, though.
I had a new job by then and my boss came to the festival as well. She took a photograph of me and pinned it on a notice board where all my customers would see it. This is how I became a transvestite.
Nobody was ever unkind to me about that photograph, although I did get some unkindness over another, which was published in a book. Maybe they had a point. It was a recipe book. But I became famous as a transvestite and so I stand with my transvestite sisters.
The thing is that I continue to be amazed at the kindness and understanding my customers showed me over my transvestism and I unashamedly exploited it to make them confront other prejudices. If they could accept that somebody like me could be a decent person, then maybe they would be more willing to accept other differences. I think it worked.
But that isn’t really the whole of it, is it? It is about sexual identity and I never found that particularly easy. I have found it difficult to be a man. Many things about me are not typical of my sex, including my image of what I should look like. At the same time, I enjoy being male, in many ways, and I don’t see why I should have to be “in a box” just because I have a penis.
Fuck it, I don’t know. But can’t you see that I am striving to be the best human being that I possibly can? Yes, I know you can. Thank you. It means everything.

The rest of the 3D shit

Alot of the work has already been done in "virtual realty". You can get headsets which can monitor eye and head movementsand you could use these to remotely control the movements of a pair of cameras.
I'm pretty sure I've seen the focusing of the eyes picked up by measuring changes in the shape of the lens, so the technology is pretty much there to create really cool 3D. But the next problem was how to do this for a million or so viewers at the same time. What got me excited enough to write it down, was that I could see a way to do this.
The answer is to use huge "compound eyes" made up of millions of tiny fibreoptic lenses. These lenses wouldn't have to move, because the movement of the eyes and head could be replicated by switching between lenses in the same "compound eye".
The focusing movements of the eye could be interpreted by "zooming" to an eye placed closer to, or further away from the action. It is possible that viewers could learn eye or head movements which would signal a switch to a "giant's" or "worm's" eye view by changing the distance between the camera lens assigned to them. The technologyn used to make the "compound eyes" is so cheap that you could feasibly have an entire stadium coated with tiny lenses.
I imagine that this would be very exciting to use and it would work for any live event, but I guess sport would be the most popular.
I don't really like sport that much and the best thing I could imagine watching would be a performance of "The Magic Flute" in one of those 18th century style productions which make maximum use of diorama.

Thinking about 3D

Here's a thought. Did you ever notice that 3D films and photographs, although quite stunning, never quite look like the real thing? They always seem to look a bit like one of those diorama things made out of layers of cardboard cutouts, or a theatre set. Why is that?
The answer must be that neither film, nor photograph contain enough data for the brain to create a true 3D image, as we experience them in real life. This seems strange because, if you know anything about 3D photography, you know it's all about recreating the way our eyes see. The 3D effect is made by using two cameras: one to create an image for the left eye and one to create one for the right. Once these two images are created, you need some kind of viewing device to ensure that the correct image to delivered to each eye. (Modern movie systems use polarised light and glasses, Victorian photographers used a piece of cardboard, which you place between the pictures at right angles and held against your nose.) Normally, the two cameras are placed the same distance apart as human eyes, but by moving them closer together or further apart, you can create perspectives which give an illusion of being either larger or smaller in relation to the scne being photographed. It's a lot of fun, but it doesn't quite work.
I figured I knew how to fix this and how to make it work for live sports TV or news coverage, but I needed to check with my son to see if he thought I was right.
If I was right, it ought to be possible to recreate the false 3D diorama effect by using our eyes alone.
My son was successful, but I couldn't get it to work, no matter how hard I tried. I still had a hunch I was right, though, because I could feel my eyes moving about like crazy. My son pointed out the problem. We were each facing in different directions. In his field of view, the room was clearly defined into a series of planes by the wall, the TV, the unit the TV was standing on and a coffee table with a mug and glass. I, however, was looking at a setteee with a confusing junble of cushions and blankets, compressed into a relatively short distance. By exchanging places with my son, I was able to confirm that my idea was a good one. The diorama effect is caused by a static perspective.
When we look at something in the real world, our eyes are constantly scanning over it, moving about and sending data sets from different perspectives. Because our eyes are also able to send data about their own movements relative to the viewed object, our brain is able to construct a complex 3D image, where this is desired. The reason I was unable to create a diorama effect by not moving my eyes was that the object I was viewing was too complex to create a diorama which would make any sense. Trying to do so only compelled me to move my eyes. My son's perspective was more successful because the relative positions of the objects could be usefully interpreted in the form of a diorama.
I'm guessing that we normally see a lot of the world in diorama form, any way, which is why 3D photography works at all. It is only when we want to view 3D detail, that multiple perspectives become necessary. The reason we notice the diorama in 3D film is because, when we try to get the detail, it isn't there, because moving our eyes doesn't change our point of view.
This is a particular problem for sport, where we will very often want to untangle one footballer's leg from another or predict who is going to get the ball.
The trick, then, is to make sure that moving our eyes DOES change our point of view when we are watching 3D sport at home. That's a pretty easy problem to solve, isn't it? Particularly when, by changing the distances between the cameras, you can make the view go really close to, or really far away from the action.
Can't think of a feasible way to make it work for recorded footage, though.

The Lemon Affair

The man I am going to talk about here was a major influence in my life. He wasn't a lover and, at the most impotant times, he was scarcely even a friend. He was a leader. He had charisma. He did the most miraculous thing i ever saw another human being do. I t was back in the eighties, you shouild have seen him go. In his time, he had the most powerful constituency I have ever witnessed, at his command. He never took that responsibilty lightly and he brought peace and positive energy into a situation where there might very well have been violence. He is the only Great Man i have ever known of.
But when the dust all cleared, the rest of us had jobs and the Great Man was still on the dole. He was still doing the work for the people who had trusted him, so he didn't have time to get a job. So a few of us got together to do a benefit for him and this is what we did. We challenged him to eat 15 lemons in under a minute and we charged people £10 a head to come and watch. We made him eat lemons until he puked up in front of us and we all said we'd put upm £20 to watch him eat cat food next week. It was supposed to be a satire, but we really did do this.

Bruno. The pinacle of Art.

I just watched Bruno. It was by far the most intelligent work of human endevour I have ever witnessed. With the DVD extras, it is even more awe-inspriring. The mexican chair people. In the extras, they have a real conversation, with a real estate agent, about the relative merits of Mexican and Nicaraguan "slaves".
The finale of the film, where they set up aan event for fascists and use it to offend them in such a way as to make them reveal their ugliness is beautiful.
I don't have anything to say for the film which it doesn't say more eloquently for itself. I only register approval, enjoyment and learning.

Some thoughts for the godly

The differences between Catholicism and Hinduism are really minimal. The main differences are structural and connected to hierarchy of the Catholic Church, which carries with it remnants of the Roman Empire. The temples of the two religions are very similar, as is the nature of worship, which involves a great deal of theatre, incense, music and so on. I once went to church with a Catholic friend and listened to the priest ask for donations to buy fairy lights for the statue of Our Lady. This is something all Hindus would understand.

At the same time, Protestantism is really a form of Islam. Its origins are in the culture clash of the crusades and its cardinal ideas are imported from Islam.

I imagine these statements might be offensive to some believers and that such people would rush to point out many profound differences in doctrine and practice between the faiths I have mentioned. So be it. Let them stop there. The rest of us will continue.

A Martian, in comparing Catholicism and Hinduism, would be struck by many similarities. He would notice, for example, that adherents to these religions worship a pantheon of deities, whose images are treated as sacred objects. Images of deities are garlanded with flowers, illuminated with candles or oil lamps, bowed to, prayed to, touched and fed with ritual meals. From time to time, statues or paintings of the deities will be observed to come to life and move, speak, weep or bleed. The Martian would also observe that not all of these deities are benign in appearance. Some of the deities are, frankly, grotesque and terrifying, involving imagery of violence, torture and cannibalism. Some are grand and powerful looking, others gentle and childish. Most importantly of all, many of the deities in both religions are female and some are children. On closer inspection, the Martian might also notice that worship in both faiths is mediated through a caste of priests. These priests act as cosmic lawyers, interpreting holy texts and conducting rituals through the manipulation of occult knowledge, which is inaccessible to the lay person.

The connections between Protestantism and Islam ought to be less controversial as they are matters of historical fact. Islam is, on its own terms, a kind of sequel to Christianity. It sets out to reform what it sees as a corrupted religion and return it to the true path, according to the will of its one, all powerful God. Protestantism does the same and its roots can be directly traced to the fact that it was necessary for large numbers of people to convert between Catholicism and Islam during era of Islamic expansion.

Our Martian, however, might not be immediately struck by the similarities, until he begins to observe what is missing from the worship in both religions. The power of the priesthood is, in theory at least, greatly reduced. Both religions stress the importance of a direct relationship between the worshipper and his God through direct access to and knowledge of the holy books. The images of the deities are gone and sacred objects are not in human or animal form but of a much more abstract nature. Crucially, there is no female deity and no worship of children or of fertility (female potency). Ritual is sparser, with less emphasis on holy potions, smells and pyrotechnics. There is no direct representation of horror and death in the temples of worship. Also importantly, the Martian might notice an emphasis cleanliness and abstinence.

Without going on about it all too much, it seems glaringly obvious to me that there are only 2 religions in the World and that these religions are antagonistic. One is a female religion and the other is a male religion.

The female religion is more physical and sensual and is rooted in the worship of real things, fetish objects lights, sounds and smells. Death and fertility are directly worshipped and the physical nature of both is stressed. Food is eaten and liquids are poured. Objects are touched and caressed. Inanimate objects are brought to life. Mystery and mumbo jumbo abound. God is multi=facetted and represented by a variety of deities.

The male religion is more abstract and austere. It is obsessed with cleanliness and reason. The physicality of life is abhorred, death and fertility are banished. God is a single entity divorced from the physical world.

Elements of both the male and female religion persist in all existing religions and are constantly reasserting themselves, so that fetishism and polytheism emerge in male dominated religions and abstraction and abstinence feature in female dominated ones.

Nothing new there.

What bears a little reflection is that a great deal of the conflict in the World might appear, to our Martian to come down to conflict between the two great religions, the cunt-worship of Catholicism/Hinduism and the cock-worship of Islam/Protestanism. It’s also satisfying to reflect on how much it will piss off all the paedos and beardy-weirdies of Godland to have this pointed out to them.

Postscript

You could, in fact, get a decent book out of this subject. I don’t suppose any of it is particularly new but I enjoyed thinking it. The idea came because I recently joined Catholic On-line, in order to be aware of which saint’s day it is. I decided to become a follower of St. Jude (of lost causes fame) as a result of a miracle he performed for me last week. This put me in mind of selecting Sawaswati as my Hindu deity of choice and the rest followed.

I got the bit about Protestantism and Islam from the only episode of Robin Hood I ever saw, where some guy who had been a captive during the crusades was explaining the positive aspects of Muslim culture, of which the doing away with of the priestly caste featured prominently.

I probably got other shit from other places.

One thing I would like to explore more is the relationship of the single male deity with the sun. I feel there is a connection between the sun and phallic power, but I don’t understand it yet. My thoughts so far involve a change of perspective from Earthward-looking to skyward-looking. When we look earthward, we see many divine entities, all of them tangible and sensible. We are also aware of the power of women to create new life. When we look skyward, we see only a single, and all powerful divine entity. A cruel and glorious one. The power of the sun is not visible as such, who can gaze upon His glory? It is not tangible as such. It is penetrating. Exposure to the sun is a powerful experience which can be pleasurable but leaves us raw. Grin. OK maybe not that last bit.